Keep things out of Google's hands

The Economist.com on Microsoft buying 1,6% of Facebook:

"Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, the world's largest software company,suggested that online social networks such as Facebook were probably “fads”. So they may be, but Mr Ballmer was simultaneously throwing himself into talks with Facebook, founded by 23-year old Mark Zuckerberg, to buy a share of the firm. On October 24th he succeeded. Microsoft will pay $240m for 1.6% of Facebook. That is a very small stake, but it nonetheless values the three-year-old firm at $15 billion, an amount that experts think is mad.

Microsoft clearly thought that it had no choice. For about three years, it has realised that while software-licence fees are its past and present, its future has to be online advertising—even though Google, the world's largest search engine, is the clear leader in this young industry. Microsoft has built its own online-advertising network, called adCenter, to try to compete with Google's."